Hitler was a Catholic in name only.That he and the church were in on killing Jews is nonsense and not backed up by Historical FACT.Some of the Nazi higher ups were indeed Catholic but as time went on Des is right that Nazi thought which was a neo pagan thing would have taken control.Catholics in large populations like Poland and other countries were indeed rounded up into concentration camps.Priests who did not follow party lines were eliminated or vanished.

Logged

"If it keeps going like this,the Zamboni driver is going to be the first star"

I'll buy that-that Hitler was Catholic in name only---except that I believe he was "in on it"--responsible and fully aware of what was going on it. The issue of the Church is, of course, a really controversial issue-maybe we should pick a book on it--pro or con- and discuss it.

No particular reason except I wanted to use a rather large demonination and they popped into my mind. At a different time I probably would have used anopther demonination.....If I offended anyone with my choices, I apologize.

I'll buy that-that Hitler was Catholic in name only---except that I believe he was "in on it"--responsible and fully aware of what was going on it.

Oh, there's no question that the extermination of the Jews was ordered by Hitler at the Wannsee Conference. Many years before that took place, he made his feelings about Jews perfectly clear in Mein Kampf.

As I read the book, I had to really exercise my imagination and still couldn't quite grasp what it must be like to have 70 some-odd half-brothers and sisters and to live in a culture like the one in Saudi Arabia. Also thought Salem Bin Laden was a very interesting character, along with the fact that the Bin Laden brothers were so wealthy that they invested in businesses and then just forgot about them.

the Bin Laden brothers were so wealthy that they invested in businesses and then just forgot about them.

If I remember the book correctly, somewhere its mentioned that hthe half brothers sometimes didn't know each other or met so infrequently they had difficulty remembering one another.

The only society I can compare them to is the Italian community in the city where I grew up. They generally bought three story houses (the houses were built in the early part of century) and housed three generations in the same house and as they family expanded they bought houses or rented them within spitting distances. In addition you would also find a substansial number of cousins, nephews, neices, etc...I don't know that this still happens, but fifty years ago it was rather common. The first generation sometimes still spoke Italian, having come over sometime in the twenties or thirties, while the second generation spoke perfect English and the third generation were just sprouting and marrying. the extended families were sometimes huge. Its not quite the same as having 70 sisters and brothers, but I sort have an idea of it. My sister married an Italian whose mother lived upstairs and whose granmother and grandfather lived on the third floor. When they had children they moved next door. Now they live upstairs from their children, etc....and it goes on.

That seems to compare if you think of generations of descendants actually descending ("down" as it were) from an original couple, but there is also the dimension of "across" (can you tell I love crosswords?) due to the multiple marriages, so that one generation has 57 siblings. Coll also seems fascinated with the dichotomy represented by Salem and Osama, yet even Salem observed religious customs when at home and acted as clan patriarch as much as international playboy/entrepreneur. His shenanigans are sure more fun to read about than Osama's piety. I love the wide gulf between Salem determining that telecommunications were the way of the future, and Osama's determination to avoid things not available to/in the time of the Prophet.

Sidenote: I dunno if Hitler was a believing Catholic or not but he/the Nazis sure enlisted followers using religious hatred of Jews (think of the odious epithet "Christkillers") and add to the mix hatred of Socialists of the Communist persuasion, many of whom were Jewish. Many of secular tendencies think another factor in the hatred of Christians for Jews harkened back to medieval times when Jews were allowed to lend money but such was forbidden to Christians as the sin of usury, with the resulting growth of wealthy Jewish banking families (and of a stereotype of Jews). OK, end of digression...will get to Osama's brand of anti-semitism soon enough.

The brother Salem sounds interesting. Maybe I should have gotten and read the book.

As to the anti-semitism, I ran into a lot of it in the biography of Einstein. Einstein himself was not religious so he figured it really didn't matter, but barely got out of Germany in time. As I've been forcing myself through reading on the Holocaust to write a children's book, I am scandalized by the perception of so-called Christians towards their fellow-man. In one of the books I read, the Russian-German was sent from Russia because her family was German, and then not well accepted in Germany because she was from Russia. But the one that really hurt was when she said that the Catholic priests, whose monastery the refugees live in, would give out treats to the Catholic children - only, denying them to the Lutheran children. How cruel!

Self-preservation motivated both families [Bin Ladens, Sauds] more than ideology.

The Sauds accomodated the USA and the mujahideen both to preserve themselves and in the interest of a nifty profit. They employed Pakistan's ISI to funnel $$$ and armaments to the latter group with OBL being the chief beneficiary of their largesse. The liberation struggle against Soviets became a cause celebre for Muslim youths and many were recruited to fight the invaders. OBL profits while keeping a safe distance from the actual conflicts (much like Cheney!).

I take it back about the preference for camel-racing -- maybe I should admit that is a pastime of the elderly generation.

Coll mentions, "Even so, in the late 1970s, there was it seemed, an almost endless amount of money to go around. Yachts, private jets, palaces filled with new technology, garages stuffed with European race cars....

I suspected as much as that habit started earlier but I didn't want to be too outre about this because Coll goes on to say in this chapter that a reform movement is already under way by the Brotherhood.

This stands to reason, as he dates it late 1970s, which was the last time we sat in long lines at the gas pumps waiting for our ration of gas for our gas guzzlers. When I went back to work in an "urban-suburban" (outskirts) hospital doing transcribing in the pathology laboratory, ordinarily a half-hour trip from where I was living on an old farm, the bus service had already been terminated. So I began to experience the "opportunism" which I'd been studying as part of the change in PRC which had gone "Modern", businessmen wore "Suits", an expression that crept into our own language. Americans, unfamiliar with how language works there, often mistakenly referred to the Westernisation of China which infuriated the Chinese because they had no intention of going "Western" and, in fact, in the historical sense saw nothing more important about Western Civilization than anything they hadn't already contributed on a par with ours. Just different not inferior, which the Vietnam war had convinced many right leaning Americans was a fact or the "Gook"ification of Asia compared to our advanced civilization. You have to denigrate the enemy to be superior to anybody.

Bush civilization with a small c got a bit carried away however because we were soon calling our former allies "Old", comparatively feeble or weak sister compared to New Allies who were sending "MEN" to the front in Iraq. Thus enraging our former diplomatic partners of the "Western world". (Of course, the Brits still came to our assistance because I think that I have to say this, they bequeathed to us their traditional Anglo-supremacist notions of colonial life east of Suez.)

However, back at the end of the Seventies, beginning of the Eighties, we had seen nothing as yet. Mainly because our government which told us the virtues of downsizing government, was actually lining individualist pockets while nobody was minding the store. Exactly what the Chinese had meant by "Opportunism" in the use of language they had adopted from the 19th.century of our old European allies whom we stiffed two decades earlier while reconstructing infrastructure to reward Business acumen of Western Europeans who were looking westward across the Atlantic.

This was when those Exotic creatures known as Saudis stood to make a fortune. They traveled in "Western Europe" and the US; where some alert business types, educated in the Protestant Ivy League to conform to WASP socializing were seeing potential in investment where we might want "office space" in the Middle East.

That's how the European racing cars ended up in Saudi garages.

By now, my great aunt with her tiny Billie Burke voice and Dick Cavett sense of humour merely showed me the Edsel in her garage, and figured it was time for me to memorize just the oral history of her side of the family after what had been done with tape-recorders in Washington,D.C.

Before I go back to read further, how is Bob doing with hospitalization this week?

preference for camel-racing ... is a pastime of the elderly generation.

The same can be said of Oriental or belly dancing which is today thought to be some form of evil by so many ultra orthodox Muslims. To me, that is a crime against humanity and a profanation against Divine Law.

As financial globalization expanded, so did the capital accumulation of the BLs - but this also meant that certain family members grew distant from one another. Bakr emerged as financial and engineering leader of the clan with Fahd continuing to play up to orthodoxy by expanding his massive spending in Medina. Osama saw this through this hypocrisy and it alienated him further from the clan. The Saudis finance OBL. Ultimately, so did Salem and other clan members.

Interestingly, OBL denied the USA gave him financial support despite evidence to the contrary. The CIA had interests in Western Pakistan as he did. The Saudi government increased its support of OBL.

It was now 1987 and the Mujahideen battles with the Soviets intensified. OBL uses his money to cultivate an image of himself as martyr and financier.

Salem continued his eccentric lifestyle and it ultimately led to his death by airplane accident.

And I think we all know how painful that can be! (Sorry, just couldn't help but smile at this particular duality.)

I'm still brought up short when I realize how old--I mean young--OBL is, all those graybeard images, I guess. I'm having trouble recalling the last video of OBL that was shown on US tv, but I continue to see his image whenever I go to buy stamps in the PO, where the "Most Wanted" posters seem to offer a consistency and continuity in an otherwise rapidly changing world (or maybe it's just that so few of those guys get caught!).

Oddly enough, the case I'm working on involves a Pakistani national who thinks he is helping his case (he acted in pro per) by revealing all sorts of very unhelpful personal anecdotes that he thinks show his "sense of humor" that would negate the charge of stalking but is highly unlikely to win over a jury: Example, at college in Alabama he found himself prey to frat boy humor when he was taken to bars in Panama City FL (!) for his first exposure to alcohol and ended by being booted out of clubs. Another time he was bet he couldn't "pull a Madonna on Highway 231"--meaning he was left naked by the side of the road to try to catch a ride back to campus--he succeeded, but the ride he caught was with a higher up at the univ. he attended, who disgustedly gave him a coat to cover his "reverse erectile dysfunction" (left with him by the roadside was his first Playboy magazine) I'm tellin' ya, you couldn't make this stuff up.